Momose Group and Chemistry EES/MES Shops Have Achieved the World’s First Magnetic Trapping of a Polyatomic Free Radicals
The Momose Group, in collaboration with the Chemistry EES and MES shops, has achieved the magnetic trapping of CH3 radicals in a vacuum chamber. After six years of development of a “coil gun” type magnetic molecular decelerator, they have successfully reduced the translational velocity of the radicals in a supersonic molecular beam from 340 m/s to < 20 m/s and confined some 50 000 radicals in a volume of 1 mm^3 between two permanent magnets for longer than 1 sec. The temperature of the radicals in the trap was <200 mK. The ability to trap important reaction intermediates such as CH3 at subkelvin temperatures could be a boon to cold chemistry. Further cooling would make Momose Group to realize the first Bose-Einstein condensation of polyatomic molecules. This work was recently published in Physics Review Letters and cited by Physics Today, April Issue, 2017.
Congratulations to the Momose Group as well as all the members in the Chemistry EES and MES shops!
Full Article: http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.093201
Physics Today: http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.7351/full/
